Holocaust survivors, second generation (14)

Reading back the blogs I wrote under the "Holocaust Survivors, second generation" I came to realize that I have not really closed the subject yet. So here it goes.

Mid 2006 a court doctor ordered some tests because, following an accident I had September 2005, I had complained about certain cognitive functions that I felt were diminished. A few months later I learned that this test was an IQ test and that I was rated as highly gifted. Then through a friend I found out about Mensa (an organization for highly gifted people). I became a member and started to join their social meetings and conversation groups. By comparing my experiences with other Mensa members I had a revealing insight on the subject of the anti-Semitism I encountered in my youth. The majority of the supposed anti-Semites from my youth were most likely only using my sensitivity about my Jewishness as a target for their uneasiness with my being “different”. The major reason for me being “different” must have been my high IQ, but back then the only valid reason I could find and was aware of was my origin. This insight did not only make me lose my residual anger but I also became much milder towards ‘ordinary’ people I encounter because now I realize that everybody acts to their own abilities.


To the first post in the "second generation" sequence.

Holocaust survivors, second generation (13)

My cousin called.

He found out about my accident and wanted to know how I am doing.

We lost contact shortly after an unpleasant phone call I had with his mother. He told me that she had broken her hip (or something) some time ago and that she was recovering well. He kept on speaking about her as if he wanted to pull out from me expressions of sadness about her situation. I noticed by myself how little I cared.

Finally as a sort of exchange to do him a favour (because he showed interest in my situation) I asked how she was doing and wished him the best for his mother (I couldn’t bring myself to tell him to wish her my best). We finished our conversation and he told me that he would call me again soon, and I knew he wouldn’t.

It seems we both inherited our mothers’ talent to communicate and converse in silence.

To the next post in the "second generation" sequence.

Holocaust survivors, second generation (12)

Contemplating now, I consider the following as the awakening of my mistrust when it comes to hidden anti-Semitism.

I must have been 9 years old.

A nanny of whom my parents were really content looked after us, my little brother and me. Once when I wanted to kiss her, just as a little boy expresses his affection for an aunt, she repelled scornfully saying: “Bah, I don’t want no jodenlijm to my face”.

Jodenlijm: literally translated means “Jew glue” and is Dutch derogatory slang for “spittle”.

I never mentioned this to my parents. I felt something between shame and the need to shield them; I didn’t want to hurt their feelings. I did see this incident for a long time as example of the hypocrisy of the people around us; friendly to our faces but behind our back contemptuously referring to us as “those Jews”.

What did upset me the most though, was not the anti-Semitism, that I had experienced already enough (verbally and physically) at school and in the street. I couldn’t understand that my parents were blind to the fact that they had taken someone “like that” in our house...

It just did not feel safe anymore.

To the next post in the "second generation" sequence.

Holocaust survivors, second generation (11)

"He who saves a life is as if he saved an entire world."


This picture is taken in 1942 or 1943.

The little boy with glasses is my father (10 or 11 years old) at his first hiding address in the war. The man at the left is a non-Jew from the Dutch resistance. Most probably it is the brother of Johannes Bogaard (Ome Hannes/Uncle Hannes) who faced the firing squad at the end of the war and posthumously received the Yad Vashem Distinction for saving over 300 Jews.


With many thanks to the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam.

To the next post in the "second generation" sequence

Holocaust survivors... not

The man in the center in the white coat is my grandfather after whom I'm named.

With many thanks to the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam.


To the next post in the "second generation" sequence

Holocaust survivors, second generation (10)

Two cousins, two perceptions.
To my cousin, she was the nicest grandmother imaginable, but to me... My first vivid memory of her was when I suppose I was 8 or 9 years old. We had not seen her for a while and my mother took me to the bus station to fetch her. Walking towards us was this old, aloof, surly and sombre woman. Then there is this other occasion I remember; I must have been 11 or so. I was waiting somewhere when she coincidentally walked by. I went over to greet her, innocent and naïve as only kids can be, and she looked at me with some disgust. She continued without even stopping or saying anything to me.

“Your mother acted as a spoiled child in Bergen-Belsen.”
What coloured this relationship to such extent? Was it bad chemistry between mother and daughter, plain wickedness or something else? Why did that woman favour her eldest daughter and her children above her other daughter and hers? My cousin recently told me that according to his mother, my mother acted like a spoiled child in the concentration camp (she was 12 when the war ended). That remark shone a whole new light on the situation for me.

Family as relics of pain?
Painful memories dug up, flashbacks, just by seeing someone or hearing the name of a murdered spouse (I’m named after my grandfather, her husband). If so, I feel pity for this woman who wasn't capable of digesting her emotions, but vented them frustratedly. If not... well... at least I had the two nicest grandparents imaginable; on my father’s side.

To the next post in the "second generation" sequence

Holocaust survivors, second generation (9)

I must have been 6.

We were in our car, standing at a red light. My father driving, my mother next to him and me in the backseat.

Next to us, real close, another car with German plates stopped. The driver looked into our car and smiled from behind his closed window. My mother was almost closer to him then to my father and she got angry with this German guy. He kept smiling at her while her anger developed into a panic rage.

I can’t remember any other occasIon, seeing my mother with that sort of mixture of anger and panic.

Light turned green, both cars pulled away at the same speed, at the same close distance to each other. Then the guy took a right turn.

And we continued along the road. My parents in the front and me in the back as observing fellow passenger.

To the next post in the "second generation" sequence

Holocaust survivors, second generation (8)

The relationship between the two sisters was tensed for as long as I remember. They even didn’t talk for a while. The contact was renewed only shortly before my mother passed away.

I understood from my cousin that his mother wouldn’t mind telling me about what happened to them in the war, so I decided to call her.

I could almost touch the tension between the two sisters in the intonations of the few polite distant words she spoke. The silences in between were yelling at me; telling me even more. It was if like she was using me to communicate with my mother, as if I had inherited my mother’s role. Then she told me that if she had time she would call me back, and we hung up.

I felt dismissed, abandoned and I cried.

To the next post in the "second generation" sequence

Holocaust survivors, the second generation (7)

April 13th 2004

An irrational fear took possession of me when I finally found the courage to visit the squalid nascence of my regressive melancholy: Bergen-Belsen.

I had mixed feelings about my partner and two eldest accompanying me. On the one hand I wanted to be alone in the confrontation with my demons, on the other it could be good to have the support of my family. It might also be good for the kids to see what should be fought: man’s cruelty to fellow man. Maybe I also wanted them to see, what might be the source for my outbursts of anger… to get some empathy, or at least to sow some, for later when they reach the age of discretion.

Although I don’t usually drive the long distances, this time I did... I didn't want to be brought there; I wanted to be in control.

It was very emotional; we walked around and saw the mass graves. Our kids left a pebble on every one of them... Then we went back into the museum that is built against it and saw the horrifying movie shot at the liberation of the camp.

In the museum there was also a book, with the names of "just" a few thousand people of the tens of thousands who arrived in Bergen-Belsen, together with the date they arrived, their nationality, profession, date of murder or further deportation.

My mother (may she rest in peace) never told me much of the war. But I remember something she once told me: “At the end of the war, just a few days before liberation, we were packed in cattle trucks to be driven into a river to drown when the Russians stopped the train just a few hundred meters before the river...”.

There I stood, in Bergen-Belsen, browsing through that book and I found the name of my mother (12 years old then), her sister and their parents. According to the book, my grandfather was killed two months before at February 16th - mauled to death by dogs in front of his family (as I recently found out). Also in that book, the date of their departure in the cattle truck...

April 13th 1945

Date to date... in some odd way it felt as close as I could get to the essence of my mother...

To the next post in the "second generation" sequence

Holocaust survivors, the second generation (6)

Beach fun

I remember my mother in her early forties, playing in the sand at the beach with an unfamiliar child of around 10. They had fun as kids can have while playing with each other...

She was happy and it made me sad.

To the next post in the "second generation" sequence

Holocaust survivors, the second generation (5)

Family
as relics
of pain...


To the next post in the "second generation" sequence

Eyes of sorrow (3)

All painted
by
the same Artist.

Eyes of sorrow (2)

Deep-set...
Dark outlined...
Depths of misery...

Holocaust survivors, the second generation (4)

Undigested emotions
disintegrating families.
Collective loneliness...



To the next post in the "second generation" sequence

Eyes of sorrow (1)

Indescribable memories,
To be read,
In the eyes of sorrow.

Holocaust survivors, the second generation (3)

My life...

Atavistic sorrow...
Regressive emotional darkness...
Will I be a good buffer for my kids?



To the next post in the "second generation" sequence

Emotionally handicapped…

Mourning in silence, sad eyes, sleepless nights/weeks/months, screaming out loud, venting emotions at each other, kids, family... And yet overflowing with love, a will to live and a forced cheerfulness...

I saw it, felt it, experienced it all... but didn't comprehend it....... then.

To the next post in the "second generation" sequence

Holocaust survivors, the second generation (2)

My father...

Thinking about my father (may he rest in peace) I visualize a particular moment in 1943: Two kids at the age of 10 and 12 - my father and his older sister - abandoned for their sake by their father at a tram-station in Amsterdam. Picked up by the resistance and brought to a save hiding place.

- Having kids myself I can’t even imagine what my grandfather must have felt leaving his kids behind like that, nor the terrible feeling of three long years not knowing if they are still alive. -

The kids were separated. My father was hidden in the northern part of the Netherlands, Friesland, given a Christian name and brought up in the Christian doctrine by a righteous family.

- We frequently visited my father’s “hiding parents”, I was only too young to realize the importancy of these people to my life. They’re both deceased, but I wish I could tell them how grateful I am, also on behalf of my kids. -

My father had his bar mitzvah together with me...

To the next post in the "second generation" sequence

Holocaust survivors, the second generation (1)

My mother...

Chicken soup on Friday night and feeling Jewish mostly because of the deep sorrow we had to carry... not very inspiring. My mother (may she rest in peace) suffered from KZ syndrome as Bergen-Belsen survivor. I was named after her father, who was murdered in front of my mother's eyes, a few months before liberation. I remember her lying on the ground, foaming... I must have been three years old.

I grew up in the sixties in a little town and vividly remember the anti-Semitic aggression I encountered. Whenever I was confronted with anti-Semitism - in my recollection almost weekly - it felt like “they” were attacking my mother and by fighting “them” I felt like defending her. I remember my anger just because of the fact that I wasn’t born earlier so I could have protected my mother.

Sorrow and pain, a lot of pain… that’s how I remember my youth. I must have had nice moments too, but looking back they seem to be covered by a blanket of dark memories.

To the next post in the "second generation" sequence